Backpacking had been a leisure pursuit until Les came upon a prefab, forest manager's cabin that turned out not to be a cabin. He now struggles to survive on an alien world using only his wits and his backpack's contents. Encounters with strange creatures, animal-like people, and a terrifying Dragon challenge his sense of reality as he finds himself in the midst of a conflict that will determine the fate of many worlds and will set him on a journey to his destiny.

Origin of The Dragon Universe

I love science, science fiction, and fantasy. I always have. Nevertheless, it never occurred to me I could write it as a career. I had dabbled in writing stories for fun, but never considered it more than a hobby. Then along came the Internet and the methods it provided for sharing. I discovered people liked my fiction about Dragons, even as amateurish as it was. When career changes provided the opportunity to move into a new life, I had many options. I settled on pursuing a new career as a speculative fiction writer.

For years, I had successfully written technical documents and articles. What could be so hard about becoming serious about writing fiction? Everything. Fiction writing is not technical writing. Fiction requires a different skill set. I studied everything I could find to learn how to write quality fiction. I set a goal of 10 years, 10,000 hours, 1,000,000 words to hone my skills. I am not yet to the 10-year mark, but I have exceeded the 10,000 hours, and I have created nearly 1,000,000 words of trunk novel material. I am improving, but I still have more practice to do.

During those years of practice, experimentation, and development, I created the worlds, characters, and plots for The Dragon Universe. Initially, I imagined a single book, but I eventually realized the story was too large. Rather than lose the story's heart and soul by cutting it to an acceptable size, I split the five phases of the story into five books. When I finish with the current trunk novel version of the story, I will return to the beginning and apply everything I have learned to create a work of art.

I feel good about how well my writing skills have developed, I am pleased by how the story has evolved, and I am excited for what the future holds. While it is still a work-in-progress, The Dragon Universe is wonderful. Follow me on my journey by following me on my web pages, Facebook, and Twitter. When the final version of the books come to market, read them and let me know how I did.

Lester D. Crawford Blog

2018-11-30 Keep Pushing, Keep Improving, and Keep Having Fun

For years, I’ve practiced the craft of writing fiction. The scale of the subject is sizeable. Every author has their own take on the topic and each has their own process for achieving success. By studying what these people teach, and by writing close to a million words, I’ve developed my process, a process that accommodates my personality and idiosyncrasies. I may never be a master, but I do constantly improve.

This year I’ve applied my process to short stories. The turnaround time for creating a short story as opposed to a long form novel has allowed me to rapidly practice story structure, character change arcs, and other details of story theory. Each story has strengthened my skill set. And, each story has been wonderful. I am proud of my accomplishments.

I’m going to keep pushing, keep improving, and keep having fun.

2018-10-31 Character Change Arc as Story Driver

Normally, I know the plot of a story first. Then I lay over that plot the main character’s character change arc. These two steps happen so close together, there’s not really a delay between developing the plot and the character change arc. With my current project, however, I did not have the plot figured out. I only knew the essence of what needed to happen.

To solve my dilemma, I set the plot aside and concentrated on the main character’s character change arc. Once I knew how the character would change, I returned to built a plot to support that change.

Over the years, I’ve studied many resources about character change arcs and feel comfortable with them, but to help with my current effort, I decided to review and refresh my thinking. I reread K.M. Weiland’s article series How to Write Character Arcs.

I was amazed how that gave me insights and ideas about my characters and the story plot. More details are still to be developed as I outline, but I’m excited about where the story is going.

2018-09-30 Fantastic Insights Occur

I’m a planner, which means I know my story before I begin writing. However, that does not mean I don’t discovery write. The plan provides the structure for the story, but the details that complete it I discovery write.

During the writing process, fantastic insights occur. For example, in my most recent short story, I discovered the dragon has a thing for rocks. When she finds a rock large enough to sit on, she jumps on it and says, “This rock is my rock.”

That affinity for rocks then grew into a backstory where the dragon collects smaller rocks, her hoard, which she enjoys sitting on. That detail is not revealed in the short story, so I feel compelled to write another story with this character so I can explore her rock fetish.

I’ll put that one on the to-do list because I another stories to write first.

The rush from having these fun insights and ideas is part of the reason why writing is addictive. I’m always looking for another flash of insight, another spark of an idea, another fix for that addiction.

2018-08-31 Short Fiction Builds Skills

Recently, I’ve been writing short stories. With them I can practice my writing craft skills quickly because a short story doesn’t take as long to write as a long-form story. This quicker turnaround allows me to refine my writing process by repeatedly running through it over several months rather than years. For these stories, I aim for 6,000 words.

Micro fiction is another form I dabble with. Every year I write a 100-word Christmas story. I tend toward long stories, so the first time I wrote one of these I was surprised I could. (Apparently, a 100-word work of fiction is called a “drabble.” That means I dabble in drabble.)

I searched for information about micro fiction story structure and discovered a variety of opinions, all of which are probably valid. The story I wrote this year has a three part structure: 1) Setup, 2) Bridge, 3) Consequence. I like the way it turned out. Later I’ll experiment with some of the structures and methods other writers suggest.

In December, near Christmas, the story should be available for you to read. Stay tuned.

2018-07-29 2018 Clarion West Write-a-thon Finished

For this year’s Clarion West Write-a-thon, I worked on my short story skills. One story is in the submission phase looking for a market to call home. A draft of a second story is finished and is now being edited. The story is slightly long for my target markets, but with some work, it will be made right. After editing, my Alpha and Beta Readers will look at it and their suggestions will be applied as appropriate. Then it will begin its submission phase.